


The Way She Is

by sittingoverheredreaming



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 20:56:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3264137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sittingoverheredreaming/pseuds/sittingoverheredreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Haruka tries wearing the girls’ uniform to school. It doesn’t go well.<br/>Vaguely sad backstory fic/drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way She Is

Haruka is twelve, and girls are pretty.

More than pretty, really; her mother grudgingly gave her the birds and the bees talk two months ago—yet another joy of puberty—and Haruka _knows_ , she knows that she doesn’t feel the things her mother described, or not the way she described them, at least.

She looks in the mirror now. Everyone had always said it would happen. _With a haircut like that, you’ll be lucky if your daughter doesn’t end up a d--… Why don’t you wear the girl’s uniform, Haruka, people are going to think…_ They were wrong, it was just what she felt comfortable in, but now… now they aren’t wrong.

She rummages through her mother’s drawers to find a headband. With it and the school uniform, she can’t see any difference between herself and the rest of the girls at school, even with her hair so short. She looks like them. She looks normal.

Haruka wears it to school, to see if it makes a difference.

“Haruka!” her friend Yuko calls when she gets to class. “You look so nice today!”

It is all she can do not to run back out the door.

Yuko and Kaori fawn over her headband, and her skirt, and why doesn’t she wear this every day? She can’t explain the lump that has formed in the pit of her stomach to them. She’s used to everyone eyes being on her—she’s the prince of the first years, after all—but now it feels wrong. And Kaori is still pretty, even with the transformative powers of the skirt.

She finds herself wondering if the skirt harms or improves her chances.

If the it improves them, she’s not sure it’s worth it.

That was the opposite of the point, anyway.

Kaori asks if she’s going to grow her hair out now. Haruka’s _no_ is harsher than she intended, but also it isn’t. These are her _friends_ , not her parents, didn’t they choose her as she really is? Didn’t they choose the Haruka Tennoh who wore pants and loved racing the way they loved idols?

Kaori pouts. “But you’d look like an actual girl with long hair.”

She leaves. Class hasn’t even started, but she’s done. She can’t do a full day of this. Outside she hides under the bleachers to watch the gym classes run. It’s calming, not as calming as running herself would be, but it’s the best she can do in this skirt and these shoes. Her legs start to scream from crouching, but she can’t bring herself to move. She’d get caught if she moved now, and the last thing she needed was to be stuck in detention today. In the break between classes, she lets herself sit down in the dirt. It’s good no one can see her; she can’t figure out how to sit without exposing her boxers.

Her finger draws nonsensical patterns in the dirt and she wonders what she really wanted today. Her reaction to Kaori proved she didn’t really want to change, didn’t it? An alternate scene pops into her mind. Yuko and Kaori see her and are horrified. “But Haruka,” Kaori says, “we like you the way you are. _I_ like you the way you are.”

Haruka draws stick figures in the dirt to represent this. Then she draws herself and Kaori in a car, riding towards the sunset. The car looks more like a box on lopsided wheels. Never mind that there’s a twelve year old behind the wheel. She wipes the foolish fantasy away with her foot.

Haruka sneaks away at midday and walks home. Her stomach sinks when she sees her mother is there, waiting. Of course the school let her know she was skipping. Of course she would leave work for this. Haruka isn’t sure if she dreads punishment or her mother’s reaction to the girl’s uniform more.

The yelling comes first. She is a delinquent, she is ruining her mother’s life. She has heard it all before. But before the “No phone, no running, no television for a week,” before the normal threats of being kicked out or sent away, her mother stops. “At least you’re finally dressing normal.”

“This’ll never happen again.”

“You don't have a choice anymore. If I’m going to get called out of work because you’ve skipped class or failed a test every few days, you’re going to at least _look_ like the daughter I wanted.”

Haruka doesn’t bother to fight the exaggeration. She has the sneaking suspicion that she'll find most of her clothes gone from her closet when she looked. But she’d been resourceful before, she could be resourceful again. Make a deal with a boy at school to pretend to be slower than him in exchange for a spare uniform, steal a pair of safety scissors to cut her hair in the school bathroom, she’d make it work.

But she thinks of Yuko and Kaori. Does everyone want her this way?

She retreats to her room and lies on her bed. The only exception she can think of is her aunt, her aunt who lives in Tokyo and said on her last visit that really, these small town people are so behind, there are plenty of girls in the city like Haruka. It has been years since then, probably because Haruka’s mother took that as an insult, but it stuck with Haruka.

Is it just this place?

Is there somewhere that would feel right?

 _Yes_ , says a voice inside her, quiet but as strong as the sea.

Haruka packs right then and there. There isn’t much to take— a pair of pajamas, the one pair of pants left in her closet, the souvenir toy car from the first race her father took her to. She makes herself include a photo of her and Yuko and Kaori, because maybe someday, they’ll feel right again. The contents of her piggy bank are dismal, but it should be enough for a bus ticket and some food. Hopefully her aunt in Tokyo will want a roommate for a little while. Hopefully, the city will be different.

Haruka is twelve, and she is running.


End file.
